Kenny Bruce: Former engine builder Lou LaRosa says sport no longer exists

By Kenny Bruce - Assistant Managing Editor

Friday, March 20, 2009

Former engine builder Lou LaRosa worked several years at Richard Childress Racing.

David Griffin
NASCAR Scene

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COMMENTARY

Lou LaRosa doesn’t have an ax to grind.

“I’m real thankful for the time I spent in [the sport] and the wonderful people that I got to meet,” LaRosa says.

As head of the Richard Childress Racing engine department during the 1980s, LaRosa was a key player in the program that carried Dale Earnhardt to two of his seven championships (1986-87). It’s also worth noting that he was building engines for team owner Rod Osterlund when Earnhardt won the NASCAR Cup series’ rookie-of-the-year award in 1979, as well as the following year when Earnhardt notched his first Cup title.

But at the close of the 1989 season, after three championships and a truckload of wins, Lou LaRosa walked away.

The reason, he says, is simple.

“I don’t like the people in racing any more,” LaRosa says. “You can print that, I don’t care. I don’t think much of the racing. I wouldn’t call it racing. All the cars are the same. When you can get a template that can fit a Toyota, a Dodge, a Chevrolet and a Ford ... [and] I know the engines are all about the same.”

LaRosa’s not alone in his beliefs. Although NASCAR has gained unimagined attention during the past two decades, there are those who denounce the direction the sport has taken. Popularity has come with a price, and some – LaRosa included – believe that price was too steep.

“You need an attorney to figure out how to drive a car today,” he says. “You can’t pass under the [yellow] line, you can’t speed down pit road, you can’t pass if the sun is out on the East Coast. It’s all just stupid rules.

“We used to have three people in the engine room and maybe eight total. Now you’ve got teams with 400-500 people. That’s not a team, that’s a factory. And it’s all about money.

“You’ve got people, and I’m not going to mention names, but they couldn’t build a model car. The people that were in [the sport] were wonderful. Bud Moore, Junior Johnson, the Pettys in their heyday, the Wood brothers. They were innovative people, and I’m not talking about cheating. I’m talking about innovative people that knew how to build a motor and get the most out of it. Build a car and get the most out of it. Now you’ve got engineers, and it’s become like Formula One. It’s an engineering exercise.”

LaRosa, a former engine-builder-of-the-year award winner, was the jackman on three Unocal Pit Crew Championship-winning teams. He was successful. His engines were top of the line. By most accounts, he had it made.

And then he walked away.

Eventually, he landed in tiny Stuart, Va., just a short drive from Martinsville Speedway and for decades home of the legendary Wood Brothers Racing team.

“I love living up there,” he says. “ It’s not that crowded. The people are real country.”

The Brooklyn native has found peace in the hills of the Old Dominion.

And he’s not totally out of the engine-building business. Most days he can be found at Patrick Henry Community College, where he is heavily involved with the Motorsports Technology Program. He clearly enjoys passing on his knowledge and passion for engines to a younger generation. He’s just no longer enthralled with NASCAR.

“There is no racing today,” he says. “It’s a fraud, and that’s why they lose fans. That’s why people could care less about it.

“People I speak to don’t even watch it on TV anymore. It’s very boring; it’s all the same racing. You’ve got little punks in there driving. Print this. You’ve got little punks in there driving, 18- and 19-year-olds, and they didn’t pay their dues.”

Great drivers, he says, are those people who “spent 10, 11 years in a Late Model Sportsman that was just like a Winston Cup car. Or in a Modified. And they worked they way in, and they had years of experience. Now you get a little punk, they pay them millions of dollars. These people have got motorhomes, they’ve got servants, they fly to races. They’re not racers. They’re just show-boaters, they’re show-business celebrities.”

LaRosa isn’t complaining, just speaking from his heart.

“I did my time. I feel thankful that I met the great people that I did.,” he says. “NASCAR was a great organization; it was the best stock-car racing in the world, and they just turned it into nothing now. It’s nothing. I wouldn’t get out of the electric chair to watch it.

“I guess that won’t get me in the NASCAR Hall of Fame, will it?”

Lou LaRosa doesn’t have an ax to grind. Just some very strong opinions about a sport he once loved.

A sport, he says, that no longer exists.